The BBC

New Labour, new chairman

The BBC is getting too close to government for comfort

THE appointment of Gavyn Davies as chairman of the BBC might seem to herald a shake-up at the corporation. As chief international economist at Goldman Sachs, Mr Davies received a £100m ($160m) windfall when the investment bank was floated in 1999. Surely he is just the man to prepare the BBC for a more commercial future once its current charter, and thus its right to collect a licence-fee from television-owners, runs out in 2006?

Not at all. Mr Davies, who has been the corporation's deputy-chairman since January this year, is a zealous advocate of public-service broadcasting. He believes passionately that a state-owned and publicly-financed institution knows better than the market how to make decent programmes. He is convinced that the existence of the BBC, with its 24,000 employees and 23,000 hours of TV broadcasting each year, lifts the standard of all British programming. And his definition of public service is broad: he regards the BBC as an instrument of public policy, whose job is to bridge the “information divide” between the haves and have-nots.

What is more, because of the compulsory licence fee, Mr Davies considers it the BBC's obligation to reach out to those viewers whom the corporation feels it is “losing”, like young people. That is why a committee he chaired two years ago backed an increase in the licence fee to finance the BBC's expansion of its digital channels. The government does not entirely share his conviction that the BBC can be everything to everybody. Last week, Tessa Jowell, the media minister, turned down the BBC's application to run a “youth” channel, while approving others for “intellectuals” and children. The government evidently felt that the market was delivering quite enough of whatever it was that “youth” wanted.

Mr Davies's ardent defence of public-service broadcasting should perhaps come as no surprise. His left-of-centre roots run deep. In the 1970s, he worked in Downing Street for two Labour prime ministers. He is close to Tony Blair. His wife, Sue Nye, runs the office of the chancellor, Gordon Brown. Hence the outrage in Tory circles this week at the installation of yet another of “Tony's cronies” in a top public-sector job. Greg Dyke, the BBC's director-general, is also a Labour man.

If the BBC and its supporters are pleased that the corporation will have such a cosy relationship with government, they are wrong to be. The BBC is valued for its high-minded neutrality. At times of crisis, that is especially important—and especially vulnerable.